Prague Counterpoint (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  “Did you hear that, Charles?” Louis awakened now at the thought of visiting the mountains, trees, and meadows. “We are going to a farm, Charles!”

  Charles opened his mouth and groaned a reply as he shook his head no and patted his chest. Leah looked at him, then turned away quickly. He saw it in her eyes. He was not going with them.

  “Of course you are going,” Louis argued. “We are all going, aren’t we, Aunt Leah?”

  Leah frowned. Were those tears in her eyes? “Charles is going with Elisa. To Prague,” she said stiffly.

  “No!” Louis stood and stamped his foot. “I am going where my brother goes! And he is going where I go!”

  “Please, Louis,” Leah began. She looked at Charles, who slipped his fingers to his mouth. Charles understood it all. Everything. They could not stay together. It seemed too much for a child to comprehend, that men pursued him because of the cleft in his lip. The look in his eyes made Leah’s heart ache. She sank onto the bed and brushed his hair back from his forehead. “You understand, don’t you, Charles?”

  He nodded.

  “No!” Louis cried. “I cannot go anywhere without him. I want Father! I want my mother!”

  Charles gazed solemnly at Louis and raised a finger, commanding him to be silent. Louis obeyed but dissolved into racking sobs as he dropped to the floor at Leah’s feet.

  “You will be together again.” Leah stroked the boy’s head.

  “That is what Father said!” Louis said through his tears. “But we will not be with him again. Not ever!” Now he sobbed harder. “They killed him. Like they killed Mommy! And now they want to kill Charles, too!”

  “Charles will be safe.” Leah was helpless before his grief. Her reassurance meant nothing. How could it mean anything, after all?

  Charles climbed out of bed. He swayed a moment and grimaced with the pain in his ears again. He knelt beside his weeping brother and wrapped his arms around him, as his father might have done—or his mother if she had been there. Gently, Charles rocked him back and forth. It will be all right, Louis, Charles’ eyes said. He tried to hum the melody, “I am small, my heart is pure, no one shall live in it but Jesus alone.”

  The ragged attempt soothed Louis. He looked up at Charles. He did not see the mark on his brother’s face, only the love in his eyes. “I will pray for you every day and night, Charles,” he promised. “That someday we will be together again. With Mama and Father, too.”

  Charles nodded and stroked his brother’s head in a gesture so tender and so hopeful that Leah had to turn her eyes away to hide her own tears. Good-bye. I love you. Forever. Good-bye.

  ***

  Hugel’s sausagelike fingers were trembling with excitement as he opened the top bureau drawer and pawed through his shorts for the gun. Suddenly it had all become clear to him. The sound of the cello music. Giggles that sounded like children. Why had he not seen it before? Ah! It is the hand of Providence guiding me once again to victory! All along they have been in my building, and now I will capture them! Five hundred Reichsmarks! The accountant would be so jealous. The Gestapo had not brought them in. No, Augustus Hugel would aim his gun in the name of the Führer and the Reich!

  Hugel checked to see that the bullets were still in place. Just as they had been in place when he had last checked. He held the gun high over his head in exultation.

  He would go slowly, quietly, up the stairs. There was no use in alerting them. He did not want to give them a chance to hide. Small children could hide in all sorts of inconvenient places. Hugel did not want that. He did not want the woman jumping from the window to kill herself as so many criminals had already done in Vienna. He did not want the mess of blood on the sidewalk. A simple arrest would do.

  He took the key ring off the hook beside his door. Tucking the gun beneath his arm, he sifted through the keys until he found the one that opened the door to 2-B. He held it poised and ready to insert into the lock. He would turn it and spring on them, and . . .

  Hugel frowned and glanced at the phone. Perhaps he should call the Gestapo. Little children had a way of dodging through the legs of a citizen and escaping. Perhaps he would need help. He lowered his chin and stuck out his lower lip in thought. If they dodged him, he would simply shoot them. He cocked the gun and steeled his will. Capturing human monsters and putting this matter to rest would earn him a lot of adulation. Five hundred Reichsmarks would buy a lot of beer.

  Hugel cursed the steepness of the stairs. When he was promoted for the capture of these criminals, he would ask to be given a building with an elevator. He was out of breath, panting, by the time he reached the landing. Gripping the banister, he stood swaying in the dark hall. He would wait a moment before he burst in on them. He would wait. And listen. And catch his breath. Just a minute longer.

  He wiped away the sweat with the back of his hand. Keys rattled together. He moved toward the door and pressed his face against the wood to listen.

  Yes. There were voices. Two women. The voice of a child with them. Hugel drew in his breath. He must not give them warning of his presence. Must not give them time to hide or leap through the window. He would bring them in alive!

  “But, Aunt Leah, where is this place? How far from the place where Charles is going?”

  Charles! The name was that of the monster child whose photograph was on the bulletin board. Hugel had seen it; he had commented how contrary to nature it was that such a freak should live and consume the food of good German children. Charles! Yes, that was the name of the little beast.

  The woman’s voice answered softly, “Not so far away. In a place where there are no Nazis.”

  The voice of the other woman spoke now, worried. “Where could he be? He told us to be ready at midnight, and it is already two hours past! He should be here by now!”

  He? Herr Hugel frowned and pressed his damp face harder against the door but could not hear the soft reply.

  So someone else was in on this! Perhaps he had stumbled on to an entire nest of anti-government criminals. He frowned even deeper and glanced back down the stairs. Perhaps he should go back and call the Gestapo. Perhaps he would need help if he was up against more than just two women and two boys.

  Then he imagined struggling up the stairs again. It was late. He, whoever he was, was late already. Supposed he came while Hugel was on the phone?

  Hugel cocked the gun and stepped back to aim the key at the lock. The gun had bullets enough. Hugel had managed to bring in a few Jews before this. This was nothing he could not handle. He would shoot them if they tried anything. That was easy enough. He would shoot them.

  ***

  At the sound of the rattle of the doorknob, Leah’s eyes met Elisa’s. A sigh of relief passed between them. They were indeed ready. Small suitcases. The cello and the violin. They would not be coming back here. They were ready.

  The knob turned as Elisa reached to open the door. “Otto?”

  Leah gasped as the door swung open to reveal Herr Hugel. She moved between the children and the barrel of the gun. Elisa stepped back as Hugel waved the weapon around the room. It was cocked and loaded. His fat finger was curled around the trigger.

  “So!” he shouted in triumph as he kicked the door closed. “So! You thought you could get by me, did you? You thought I was not watching, eh? Well, I will tell you I have been alert to everything! Ja! I have been watching for these children! That freak you are hiding behind you, woman! I noticed! I heard everything! The sound of the cello!” He pointed the gun at the cello case as though it, too, were the enemy.

  “What do you want?” Elisa tried to control the shaking of her voice. They had been through too much for it to come to this. “Money? We can pay you––”

  He was insulted. “Money? Ha! I am incorruptible. My honor as a son of the Fatherland is without dispute. However, I shall tell the police that you offered me money, that you have money to offer, but that I refused to take it. You will not bribe me.” Now he was chuckling. His honor pleased him. Only
a very good man would refuse a bribe.

  “Let us go. We will make certain––”

  Now he raged. “You? You will make certain of nothing! I arrest you in the name of the Reich! Heil Hitler! I arrest you and this little mutant.” He pointed the gun at Charles, who covered his mouth with his hand. “Don’t try and run around me. I will shoot you as easily as a rat. I know who you are! I read it all! Because of you––”

  “Shut up!” Leah took a step forward.

  “Don’t come closer!” Sweat poured from Hugel. “We will wait here for him! For your partner! And then I will take you all in. I have bullets enough to go around. Do not doubt!” His watery blue eyes bulged with stress. He looked wildly from one to another and then back again. “All of you! Hands against the wall!” He had seen the Gestapo method of arrest. Against the wall was the first order of business. If they did not obey, then . . .

  Charles was the first to step to the wall. Elisa followed, glancing angrily at Hugel and then to Leah as if to ask what choice they had. Otto was coming, but Hugel knew that, too, somehow. Leah put her hands against the wall as Hugel jabbed the gun barrel behind Elisa’s ear. “And I thought you were such a pretty lady! I thought you were one of us!”

  ***

  The medicine had worn off, and Charles began to cough again.

  “Let him lie down,” Elisa said, her own arms aching from the hour Hugel had forced them to stand facing the wall.

  Hugel was relaxed, enjoying his power now as he sat back on the sofa and stared at his captives. “Shut up,” he menaced. “And you!” he barked at Charles. “You can stop that noise if you want! Shut up!”

  Helpless, Charles continued to cough, finally leaning against the wall in exhaustion.

  “Stand up there! You will not trick me with such an act, you little monster! Troll! Stand up there, I tell you!”

  Charles could not find the strength to obey.

  “You are the monster!” Leah cried, kneeling to hold the little boy.

  “Get back up there—hands against the wall,” Hugel commanded, struggling to his feet.

  Leah did not move away from Charles, who now rested his head wearily against her shoulder. Hugel lunged forward, grabbing Charles by the back of his shirt and swinging him around as he kicked Leah hard in the back.

  She cried out and topped over as Hugel pressed the barrel between Charles’ eyes. “Little monster. Who would notice if I put another hole in your face? Something to match this one, eh?” He moved the barrel to the child’s mouth. Louis began to weep bitterly. Elisa cried, “He is just a baby!”

  Hugel held him off the floor. He put the gun barrel in the boy’s mouth where the tissue was painfully tender and inflamed. Tears came to Charles’ eyes, but he did not cry out.

  “A baby! A baby what! I have shot cats that are not so ugly as this!”

  “Isn’t it enough?” Leah cried as she struggled to her knees. “Isn’t it enough that you hold us here? Must you also be so cruel?”

  Hugel laughed at her accusation. “He doesn’t understand what I am saying! He has no mind! A brainless idiot! I read all about it! A drain on society, he is! Better off if he had died at birth. Or been put out of his misery!”

  Terror that Hugel might be the one to end the boy’s life filled Elisa and Leah. They dared not speak another word. How could they argue with this? What was left to say in the face of such abysmal self-righteous cruelty? Any moment Otto would walk through the door, and then it would all be at an end.

  Hugel threw Charles to the floor and let him lie there gasping for breath. “Don’t try anything,” Hugel growled. “I am at the end of my patience.” He came near each of his prisoners in turn, pressing the muzzle of the gun to each neck. He let them feel his power, the nearness of death. He was fully sober now, and with the sobriety his viciousness had deepened.

  Elisa closed her eyes and prayed for Otto. Perhaps he had listened at the door and had heard Hugel. Perhaps Otto had turned away and left them there in the hands of this man. The minutes dragged by, and with their passage, the hope that Otto might somehow help them vanished.

  ***

  When the job was finished, Otto scrutinized the documents under the strong light of the engraver’s lamp. “A good job,” Otto said with satisfaction.

  “Good? No one can tell the difference between these and the real thing!” The engraver was proud of his handiwork.

  Otto flipped a few bills out onto the desk. “That is enough.” It was half of what the man had demanded.

  “Enough? I told you—” the engraver began to protest.

  “And now I am telling you—” Otto stopped him with a steely look—“one word of this to anyone, and there is a dark cell waiting for you.”

  Otto had a reputation of ruthlessness to maintain. The engraver nodded and gathered up the money. He had done his job. No one would hear about it—at least, not from him.

  It was well past midnight when Otto reached the Gestapo building. This was the hour when the halls were crowded with terrified men with nightshirts tucked into trousers and handcuffs on their wrists. This was the hour when the tormented howls of victims echoed in the halls like the baying of dying wolves.

  Otto lowered his head and ran quickly up the steps past a guard who shoved a weeping man to the floor. This was the hour when Otto most hated himself and this place, when the madness of his mission threatened to overcome his sanity and send him screaming into the night.

  He slammed the door of his dark office, trying to shut out the screams of the inferno. Still the sound penetrated the wood and bored into his senses. He took out a sheet of stationery and began to write:

  To whom it may concern:

  Charles Murphy, aged five, bearer of French passport and in the company of Elisa Murphy, is a sufferer of tuberculosis. By order of Gestapo, he is to be allowed to pass through the Austrian frontier. Destination: Heldorf Tuberculosis Sanitorium; Marienbad, Czechoslovakia. Any delay or harassment will result in inquiry by Vienna Gestapo HQ.

  Signed Otto Wattenbarger

  It was done. He had put his name to the document that would smuggle out of the reach of the Reich a child who represented a threat to all Hitler stood for. There could be no explaining this act away if he was discovered. This threat of Gestapo investigation was empty. Even as Otto stamped the paper with the official Gestapo seal, he knew that this was also the seal used to verify death warrants and notices of execution. Perhaps he had just sealed his own death warrant as well as those of Elisa and the boy. Whatever it meant, it was done, and Otto would not undo it.

  He waited long enough for the ink to dry, then slipped the notices into an envelope bearing the seal of the Gestapo. He stamped each side with his personal officer’s seal, then clicked out the light. As the shrieks of a woman resounded in the halls, he hurried out into the darkness that was Vienna.

  47

  Flight From Darkness

  Murphy sat disconsolately in the empty waiting room at Heathrow. Like Sandburg’s poem, the cursed fog had come in on little cat feet and had trapped every available bird in its claws. Nothing was flying to England and nothing was flying out either.

  Murphy paced for a while, pausing every few steps to glare at the gray wall in front of the window. The thought that he was this close to seeing Elisa again and yet unable to reach her made him not only worried about her, but irritable. He told the ticket clerk just what he thought of this ridiculous air-travel nonsense, and then he turned down a ride back to the Savoy. Now there were no taxis either. Only a crazy person would drive in this stuff. Or fly. Murphy was the only man crazy enough to want to.

  He wished now that he had gone back to the Savoy. Wadding up his coat, he stretched out on a bench and pretended to sleep. It was night, after all. A man was supposed to sleep at night. And if he couldn’t, he at least ought to look as if he were trying.

  An hour later he realized that there was no one at all in the building to see him trying to sleep. Absolutely everyone else in the wor
ld had gone to bed. Murphy sat up and scanned the walls for the light switch; then, with a sigh, turned out the lights at Heathrow.

  ***

  Hugel sat up straight as footsteps sounded outside on the stairs.

  “You!” he snapped to Elisa. “Go to the door.”

  Elisa hesitated until Hugel shook the gun at her.

  The rapping was barely audible. Otto was back.

  “Ask who it is,” Hugel demanded in a whisper.

  “Who . . . ?” Elisa’s voice faltered.

  “Otto. Hurry up!”

  Hugel stood beside the door, his gun trained at eye level. “Open it,” he told Elisa, and his lips curved in a slight smile.